SICK Indeed! (picture is a actual screen cap from the video)

Unfortunately the website link I’m providing does not have any still pictures, just a rather long video. However the video is a fairly mesmerizing video of perhaps one of the most complicated automated parking systems I’ve ever seen. For those of you who share similar tastes to me, you might already find Japanese automated parking systems cool. This is a new and larger scale spin on crazy engineered automated parking garages.

The video is here (note, I had problems viewing in firefox but it worked well in Internet Explorer)

http://www.woehr.de/en/projekte/budapest_m730/index.htm

Thanks to Hamzah for the info on this!

1. Rice Paddy Art in Japan

My friends at ASI Japan posted this cool and quirky trend on their blog recently. They have a number of pictures of rice fields with some pretty crazy art integrated into them.

link: http://asituning.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/showa-ward-nagoya-is-on-fire/

2. Austin Powered (by F20C)

I love my S2000 and I love light weight sports cars. What is not to love about an Austin Healey Sprite with a S2000 motor swap!? With all of the time we spend discussing tuned cars putting out huge power #s, I can pretty much guarantee you that nobody is having more fun with 240hp than the owner of this car. Quantifying the fun of driving a car is never as easy as quantifying horsepower.

link: http://jasonsgrainofsalt.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/austin-healey-sprite-a/

3. Bosozoku Style Ferrari!?!

A Berlinetta Boxer 512LM Ferrari got some JDM Boso-esque modifications that I never would have imagined. This is truly unique and quite crazy! As insane as it is, it’s even more impressive when you remind yourself how tame and dated the regular Ferrari is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrari_Berlinetta_Boxer

link: http://ra64freddy.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/bb512lm/

There we have it, table scraps for the weekend. I really don’t like to put recycled content on here, but hopefully you can find some value in my perspective and sharing these things that excite me!

I wanted to discuss an often overlooked topic about 3pc wheels. Wheel companies have interesting ways to increase the diameter of rims without increasing the actual centers of the wheels. This NSX is a perfect example because it runs staggered rim sizes of 19″ up front and 20″ on the rear. If you notice the lips, the rears have an extra inch of height built into the lips to accept smaller centers. As a result a larger wheel can be used without engineering a larger center. From a distance the visual downside is that it does not look any bigger because the size perception of wheels often rests with the spoke length. However on a car like the NSX rarely do 20″ wheels look appropriate, this is a great way to pull off 20″s while still making the car look sporty and not ridiculous.

Its one of the many tricks of 3pc wheel making which can ultimately make your wheels appear to be bigger or smaller. The opposite technique of this is using a reverse drop on wheels which gives a flat lip instead of a more traditional step lip design. The result in that case is a center face that is an inch larger looking than if you had a traditional step lip. As a result for most custom 3pc wheel companies you can order a 19″ wheel with 19″ center forgings with a reverse drop or the same 19″ wheel with 18″ center forgings with a step lip. In this case we essentially have a 20″ wheel with 18″ center forgings and a mega step lip to cover the difference.

End result, Work is able to sell a 20″ Work Meister S1 3pc wheel without needing to engineer a larger center disc.  This is a very cool picture that Matt posted on his blog because I’ve seen the 20″ Meister S1 3pc in catalogs for years but I’ve never actually noticed one used before. You can spot it quickly as I have by looking at the the lips/outer halves.

This car was recently featured on our guest blogger FarmofMinds blog. The original post is : http://minds-farm.blogspot.com/2010/07/apex-blue-pearl-nsx.html

1. The Varis/VRS BMW E92 M3.

Although I could do without some of the graphics (or perhaps a different design), the overall functional tune of the car is flawless. From the functional VRS aero to the Endless monoblock 6piston race brakes, this is a very focused and serious track oriented M3.

2. A sneak peek of a dry carbon R35 GT-R Spec V in Japan. GT-RR.COM will be putting out more information on this one soon…for now, I just love this picture here.

I’d be staring at one of these all day. Amazing piece of watch machinery. This encapsulates the things that we love with car tuning, design and innovation, down to the titanium material of it’s construction.

The watch is the MB&F Thunderbolt Horlogical Machine No.4. Cost is upwards of $150,000 USD.

Of course it’s quite a wasteful way to blow through that kind of cash, but if $150,000 needed to be spent on a watch to satisfy one’s cravings…this would be a nice choice compared to diamond encrusted blingy alternatives with a mere fraction of the creativity shown here.

If I had the money you’d see me rolling in this Ferrari F40 LM that’s currently for sale. This thing is MINT. And when is the last time you saw a Silver F40 LM (never). Super super clean and hardcore. One of the best cars ever. Somehow, there is only 800km on the car! Amazing and yet shameful for the previous owner at the same time…

This is what dreams are made of.

When we were installing the Tommy Kaira carbon rear under spoiler and diffuser I took a picture of the new Amuse x GT-RR 90MM exhaust. It got me thinking of how awesome this would look exposed like this with a custom Super GT-esque short rear bumper and diffuser design. I love this exhaust so much that I’m sad to have it covered with body work. If I didn’t already like the Tommy Kaira rear end so much, I’d design and build a custom rear diffuser to work with the upper portion of the stock rear bumper and do just that. It’s undeniably hardcore.

The GT-R project continues on with its early stages. I owe a great deal of thanks to two of our highly valued partners on this project: TommyKaira and Powerhouse Amuse, two of Japan’s best tuners.

We’ve recently installed some new parts of theirs on the car for testing. The exhaust is of course the earlier discussed GT-RR x Amuse colalborative project 90mm titanium exhaust. I’m in love with the exhaust, I’ll just leave it at that.

We recently test fitted up the new TommyKaira parts and I’m happy to report that they fit like OEM (we installed in the parking lot outside our sales office with a basic tool set) and the final version parts look even better in person than I expected. We currently have installed the rear portion of their incredibly intricate aero kit. Just the rear portion in itself is is four individual components:

carbon fiber rear under spoiler

carbon fiber racing diffuser

carbon fiber trunk lip spoiler

carbon fiber/frp rear wing

I’m reluctant to share too much of the car because I want everyone to enjoy the car in it’s final conceptual state (which will look almost nothing like this). However since this project will evolve in many stages over many months, I simply cant keep it all a secret that long. For now, I can say that the early stages will be relatively simple but keeping with the ultra high quality and high performance concept.

To be honest, the slow updating of the demo car is a little awkward to share since the previous 3 demo GT-Rs we’ve prepared, and my gold widebody S2000 were all essentially completed and shown publicly within a month or two time frame. Because with this car I’m not working under those time lines, I think there will be a lot of confusion about the direction of the car until it’s all completed. Until then, I hope you enjoy the updates for the simple pleasures that they are.

I’ve created a page on GT-RR to document the car’s slowly evolving build. Updates will rarely be in real-time, but effort will be made to debut the updates to the car there first.

http://www.gt-rr.com/product.html?m=_gt-rr_demo_car&n=gt-rr_demo_car_no__4_-_bens&id=1187

Best,
Ben

Written by guest blogger John Babbitt

Edited by Ben Schaffer - John is a regular reader of this blog and he emailed me with some inspiration to write a feature on American cars tuned in Japan with Japanese tuning philosophy. After I checked out a few email links he sent me, I told him that I felt this Camaro was fitting for the idea and I encouraged him to write a guest blog presenting the car/topic. A couple of days later and here we are…

Hello everyone, my name is John, and I hope that you find this post to your liking.-jbab

When it comes to JDM tuning, the Chevrolet Camaro is far from an ideal platform. For one, it’s American, unsophisticated, and, lets face it, there’s a certain image attached to most American cars that most would like to avoid. But the goal here today is to open some minds about this car, and to help me do that is what I think might be the coolest Camaro you’ve never seen.

Enter the Grace Hardcore Camaro. First things first, the vented carbon fiber hood lets you know this is no American’s ride. Other aero treats include the front and rear under diffusers, 3D wing and front bumper canards. Nicely polished Work Meisters wrapped in AO48 tires, make a beautiful addition to the already striking body.

The level of tuning is pretty impressive elsewhere too, including huge Brembo rotors, F50 4 pot calipers up front and Grace 2 pot calipers down rear, all with lots of ducting to keep things cool. Full coilover suspension is another rare item within the Iroc community. Top it off with a massive 3 point strut tower brace, and biblical strut mounts.

The engine is a GM Performance TPI 6.2, with a carbon fiber ram air system and an enlargened exhaust (no flowmasters here!) Unfortunately, the auto tranny stays, but upgraded with a B&M valve body kit. A 25 point roll cage and stripped interior finish this machine off.

The JDM scene has really got its roots here on our soil, so hopefully, with the affordability and abundance of American sports cars, more of them like this will start to emerge on this side of the pacific.

P.S.- Here’s a small video of this car at Tsukuba.
http://www.grace-co.co.jp/img/interclub/interclub.wmv